Prague-based ALWIL Software has offered "Free antivirus for everyone" for what seems like forever. The company was founded in 1991 and their core product dates back to 1988. With around 100 million users they protect a substantial fraction of all consumer PCs worldwide. Due to a blip in the release schedule, I wound up previewing the beta last November. Now available for all, avast! Free Antivirus 5.0 (free, direct) has a totally new appearance and offers significantly enhanced protection against malware.
The previous looked more like a media player utility than an antivirus app. If that wasn't strange enough, the included "skins" feature could make it look like just about anything. With version 5.0 avast! gets a more standard rectangular appearance. You can't disguise it as a Star Trek instrument panel any more, but finding features is a lot easier.
The core antivirus/antispyware engine got a rewrite for this edition, and it also got some new components to aid in the fight. A new heuristics engine watches process behavior to detect malware that signatures won't catch. A new code emulator lets avast! evaluate behaviors without letting a process run, and it also lets the app examine programs that are packed to conceal their contents.
This version adds scheduled scanning and optional detection of less risky "potentially unwanted programs." The latest avast! uses a new virus database format optimized for incremental updates. And the new gaming mode suppresses popups when it detects a program running in full-screen mode. Other notable features include boot-time scanning, wake-up from sleep mode to scan, and automatic scanning of files received through e-mail, IM, and P2P applications. And, unlike AVG V9, avast!'s free edition has all the power of the paid Pro edition.
Decent Test Results
Austrian lab AV-Comparatives released a number of tests toward the end of last year. avast! rated ADVANCED+, the best possible rating, in a test measuring performance impact. Out of eight tests throughout the year avast! scored ADVANCED+ in three, ADVANCED in four, and merely STANDARD in 1.
While avast! didn't come close to receiving "product of the year" AV-Comparatives did award it a bronze medal for fast on-demand scanning. I can't figure that one out; my own results show it scanning significantly slower than average. Both ICSA Labs and West Coast Labs certified avast!'s ability to detect malware, and it received the VB 100% award from Virus Bulletin in eight of the last ten Windows-based tests. Overall, the lab results are positive, though not overwhelming
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